This blog features news and events associated with Asian Australian Studies. Asian Australian Studies is a growing field that investigates the diasporic cultures, politics and histories of those of Asian descent in Austalia.
All information is sourced from the AASRN (Asian Australian Studies Research Network) and its members. For more information about the AASRN, visit our website at: www.asianaustralianstudies.org

to attend the official dedication of a commemorative monument to the Chinese who lost their lives or who are buried at the Buckland.

This event coincides with the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the riotous attack on the Chinese residents and miners of the Buckland Valley in 1857.

Ms Candy Broad, MLC Member for Northern Victoria, will dedicate the memorial stele. This ceremony will be the culmination of the Buckland Chinese Australian Heritage Project, funded by Heritage Victoria and supported by the Alpine Shire.

Director, Chris Maver, has been producing and facilitating Queer events since the fabulous 80’s. For four performances this June, at the Judith Wright Centre, Chris will gather a stellar cast of young, sexy, brilliant artists under his “pride” care to present his latest offering, The Fruit Tingle Cabaret.

Chanteuse Jo Doyle, vivacious, sassy, singing sensation, and runner up in the 2006 Australian Lesbian Idol program is coming directly from her residency at Spring Hill’s Scarlet’s.

The desirable Fez Fa’anana and partner in passion, Mark Winwill, pull out all expletives for a tempting, tumbling and terrifyingly physical tête-à-tête which will leave audiences gasping.

Simon Chan takes us on an oriental excursion into being gay and Asian (‘Gaysian’). Simon is a well known music and theatre writer and he will be presenting his own style of musical comedy.

Whipping this all together, gender confusionist, Chris Maver dishes up a fruity lesson in Queer history. Gary Nunn supplies the musical topping.

And for one night only, on Saturday 9 June, the lively musical passion of Bertha Controltrips the light fantastic into Valkyrian depths, finishing the season in a celebratory frenzy of dance!

Reaching out to Queer and non-Queer communities and institutions, to acknowledge and celebrate Queer arts, The Fruit Tingle Cabaret is presented in association with Pride. Purely home grown, 100% local, this Queer cabaret, showcases cutting edge and innovative multi-artform performance.

India has a long standing historical connection with Australia. It is said that Indians were present on Captain Cook’s ship as sailors and the first shipment of food supplies—“the bread” that Governor Macquarie talks about—to Australia arrived, in 1791, from India in the vessel called Sydney Cove that had sailed from the port of Kolkata. Besides, many Australians had spent time in India as servicemen, advisers, diplomats, lawyers, journalists, technicians, missionaries, teachers, and travelers, working for the Empire, living in the “contact zone,” engaging with and spreading their perceptions and knowledge about India through travel, study, art and literature. The extent of interest and familiarity that Australian writers/artists have shown for India can be gauged through their writings – novels, short stories, poetry, travel narratives, biographies, sports writing and films. To celebrate our literary links, we invite articles (4000–5500 words) on Australian perceptions and representations of India, from the colonial to post-colonial times.

Over the last few decades while more and more scholars have focused on “Asia,” India has not been so much of a focus in the Australian imagination as has Japan, China, Vietnam or Indonesia. While the images of China and Japan have been largely negative, seen in the notion of the “yellow peril,” India was familiar in a more positive way in Australia, not in terms of culture or literature, but as a lifeline. Australia and India share some undeniable connections, from the pre-colonial negotiations between the Aborigines and traders from the coastal regions of India to the colonial interaction through the bonds of Empire, sharing one Raj. There are traces of India everywhere in Australia: family names in the telephone directories, descendants of cameleers, hawkers and farm workers; household retinues and names of towns and streets—like Coromandel, Lucknow, Seringapatnam, Lal Lal, Howrah, Barrackpore and so on. Then there’s the post- and neo-colonial religio-cultural tourist trail of pilgrimages to India seeking spiritual enlightenment or adventure, relations forged by trade, Multi-national Corporation’s, and now the “academic traffic” between the two countries through ever increasing numbers of international students, Memorandum of Understanding’s, University exchange, writers’ programmes and so on.

Questions that can be reflected upon in the articles can range from orientalist, historical, political, social or cultural consciousness, experiences, (mis)representations, and perceptions of India as reflected through the consistently evolving corpus of literary works produced by Australian writers such as John Lang, Henry Lawson, Victor J. Daley, Ethel Anderson, Molly Skinner, Eve Langley, David Martin, Geraldine Halls, Vicki Viidikas, Christopher Koch, Colin Johnson, Syd Harrex, Barry Hill, John Kinsella, Jeri Kroll, Kenneth Slessor, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Fay Zwicky, Les Murray, Janette Turner Hospital, Inez Baranay, Jane Watson, Gregory Davies Roberts and many others (who can be located for analysis in A Bibliography of Australian Literary Response to “Asia” compiled by Lyn Jacobs and Rick Hosking (1995)—http://www.lib.flinders.edu.au/pub/series/2/).

Essays examining other thematic issues related to the colonial spirit, cultural shocks, appreciation, Australian familiarity with Indian sensibility, spirituality, sports writing, place names, domestic architecture and so on are also welcome. It may be useful here to compare the works from colonial and post-colonial perspectives. Articles that are interdisciplinary in nature and articles published recently in refereed journals or critical books are also welcome.

Rick Hosking is an Associate Professor in English and Australian Studies at the Department of English, School of Humanities, FlindersUniversity. His areas of expertise include Australian literature; creative writing; contact history; (South) Australian Studies. He is the co-editor of Fatal Collisions: The South Australian Frontier and the Violence of Memory (2000), which won the Historical Society of South Australia John Tregenza Award for National Community History.

Amit Sarwal is currently an Honorary Visiting Academic at the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University, Australia as the recipient of the Endeavour Asia Award (2006). He has co-edited English Studies, Indian Perspectives (2006) and Australian Studies Now (2007).

Bias: offensively Chinese/Australian, is a collection of essays by Ouyang Yu, newly released by Otherland Publishing (limited edition of 200 copies).

315 pages long with a full-colour cover, the book is divided into eight sections, with critical articles on Australian and Chinese poetry, Australian literature, writings in the Chinese diaspora, cultural and linguistic identities, literary translations, Australian/Chinese reciprocal representations, one interview and selected reviews of Ouyang Yu and his works, as well as an extensive Selected Bibliography on works by and on Ouyang Yu.

Among these articles originally published in Australia and overseas, there is the earliest piece Ouyang wrote in English in 1992 and other provocative pieces such as ‘Absence Asia: What’s Wrong with Australian Poetry?’ and ‘Let’s Eat Chinese’.

Copies will be numbered and signed.

For your information, the title is based on Joseph Furphy’s well-known remark: Temper: Democratic. Bias: Offensively Australian.

To order a copy, priced at $54.95 plus postage ($4.50 for Victoria, $6.50 for other states and $8.50 for overseas), all in Australian dollars, please fill the following form:

21 May 2007

The ninth annual Fairfield City Writers' Festival (FCWF o7) is organised by Fairfield City Council and is supported by many partners: Powerhouse Youth Theatre, Fairfield Advance, Metro Screen, Sydney Film School, Fairfield Writers' Group and the Sydney Writers' Festival.

The Festival will appeal to all local aspiring writers and members of the community, with the opportunity to speak with local, national and international authors across the three days of the festival.

This year’s theme, ‘The Forgotten’ ensures lively dialogues on forgotten people, forgotten histories, lost identities and hidden memories. Three free events will be held in Fairfield City at two venues, Cabramatta's Whitlam Library and Fairfield’s School of Arts.

FEATURED filmmaker:Timothy Ly is a 22 year old Fairfield resident who won the 2005 Shortcut's film festival for Best Film for his martial art/comedy Maximum Choppage. He currently studies in Digital Video Production at Qantm Collge which he has been working on a number of projects ranging from short films, documentaries, music video and TV commercials. He will be presenting an excerpt of Maximum Choppage: Round 2, the sequel to his first hit which has been in local production for 3 years.

FEATURED artist:Matt Huynh is a Canley Vale based comic creator and self-publisher who has worked across a vast variety of styles, artforms and collaborators. His diverse body of work includes the recently published collaborative comic entitled CAB: Collaborative Auto-Biography which features stories from a dozen contributors. He has also contributed to projects such as Dee Vee Anthology, Generation 2004 & 2005, Voiceworks and the Triptych 2006 concert.

Yes… There are two Opening Nights!There are just so many people to thank. So please, let us know when you would like to see SHRIMP by giving the booking line a call and we will make sure your name is at the door of the theatre on the night you nominate.

1 May 2007

Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-cultural Transactions in Australasia is a ground-breaking study of cross-cultural theatre in the Australasian region. Focusing on a range of theatrical events and practices in avant-garde, mainstream and community contexts, this book explores the cultural, political and ethical dimensions of Australia’s engagement with Asia. Aboriginal theatre is also featured as an important aspect of regional arts traffic. A complex and fascinating analysis that sheds light on international arts marketing, broader trends in cross-cultural performance training, and current debates in performance studies.

Pre-publication endorsement:

‘This brisk and succinct narrative inflects and counters the valorization of cosmopolitanism in global cultural discourse. Its major achievement is to locate diverse cosmopolitan practices within the embattled national imaginary of Australasian theatre. In countering official nationalism and legitimized xenophobia at intensely local and regional levels, it offers substantial evidence of how cosmopolitics can be put into practice at ground levels. This book is immediate and relevant.’ —Rustom Bharucha, author of The Politics of Cultural Practice and Theatre and the World

About the Authors:

HELEN GILBERT is Professor of Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, and co-convenor of the College’s interdisciplinary Postcolonial Research Group. Her books include Sightlines: Race, Gender and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre (1998), Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (with Joanne Tompkins, 1996) and Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology (2001).

JACQUELINE LO is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Convenor of the Literature, Screen and Theatre Studies Graduate Program at the Australian National University, Australia. She is the author of Staging Nation: English Language Theatre in Malaysia and Singapore (2004) and Chair of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network